Let me tell you a story. I'm going to ease into the message. We are not singing "Rattle" again. Y'all tricked me into that last week, and
I never really got to preach a real sermon. Y'all can go ahead and sit down. They're going to come back and sit on stools
so I don't feel completely and totally alone. You can sit down too if you want to. I don't care what you do. Whatever you need to do to get your faith
charged. I saw some people listening to me preach this
week, and they were doing Tabata squats with my sermon. I was like, "Cool, man. Way to be creative." That's what I call exercising your faith. It's really cool. And we need some exercise. I'm looking out for you. I realize that some of y'all have not moved
that much as you just did in the last eight minutes in the last eight days. We're just trying to look after your spirit,
soul, and body at Elevation Church. What God gave me today kind of goes along
with this idea of… Just put this in the chat. That's my thing right now. I can't "Touch your neighbor." I can't "Hug your neighbor." I can't do anything with neighbors. We're not even allowed to make eye contact
with our neighbors. I'm so scared of my neighbors right now. My neighbors are wearing masks and gloves,
and I don't know what to do with my neighbors. So we're just chatting. We're just putting it in the chat. That's the new "Touch your neighbor." I want somebody to make a tee shirt this week. "Put it in the chat." It's the new "Touch your neighbor." We're starting it together. It's a revolution. Just put it in the chat real quick. Say, "This is not normal." That's such an expansive thought that I think
I may spend the next several weeks just unpacking the idea that normal as we know it is over. You realize that, right? Last week, when we were getting ready for
Easter and I was thinking, "What do you wear on Easter Sunday when there's nobody else
in the room?" I was like, "Oh man. We should do a nice normal Easter service,
because there are going to be more people watching us than ever before. I don't want to make a bad impression on the
first-time visitors or give anybody heart palpitations." We were releasing this song called "Rattle." That sounds like an Easter song, right? I was like, "God, this is not normal." Like Easter ever was. Like people getting up out of tombs is so
normal. Like the dead rising again is just an everyday
occurrence. Like the idea that an angel just moved a stone
out of the way and somebody who had been there hours ago was no longer there is normal. It got me thinking about this phrase you're
hearing a lot right now from people. I actually want to take my time with this. I don't know if this message can be completed
in a week or three weeks or four weeks. I might have to preach long today. I don't know. So you may need to cancel your lunch plans. What am I saying? You don't have any lunch plans. You don't have any plans for anything. This is like a preacher's dream come true. You are so captive right now, so we could
just do it. The main thing you might have to do is turn
your crockpot down. But this is not normal. We hear a phrase a lot. At least I do right now. Listen. Since this is not a normal weekend, I'm not
a normal preacher, this is not a normal church, you're not a normal person either… As a matter of fact, the only people who think
you're normal are the people who don't know you. John Ortberg wrote a book called Everybody's
Normal Till You Get to Know Them. Anybody you think is normal is somebody you
don't really know. Everybody is normal till you get to know them. Your wife is weird. You didn't see the weirdness of your wife
when you were dating her. Your wife was weird when you met her; you
just didn't know her yet. What we're looking at right now is a sentiment
a lot of people feel. Here's what I'm doing. I did not give them my title for the message
because I wanted to try something new today. Rather than put it up on the screen fancy,
I wanted to do my own special effects today, because I don't know what's going to happen
in the next weeks to come, but what if we can't put the title up anymore and I still
need to preach to people? Well, I'm going to make my own title card. Okay? I'm doing my own stunts today. Here's the phrase I've been hearing from a
lot of people. I'm going to show you this. I've heard this at least a hundred times,
whether it's people on the news or people I know or our staff here at Elevation. Here's the phrase. This seems to be the goal. This is what I'm hearing a lot of people talk
about right now. And this is just a piece of Elevation Church
stationery. I just wrote it down, because it's not a normal
Sunday, so I didn't want to preach a normal sermon and throw it to a normal title. I'm hearing this right now, like, "Oh man! I just can't wait until things get back
to normal." I'm hearing a lot of people talk about "How
long is it going to be before things get back to normal?" Honestly, I'm ready for some normalcy in the
Furtick zip code as well. I really am. I'm ready for some normalcy to our schedules. I'm ready for some normalcy to date nights
with my wife. I know that sounds really fancy or frilly
at a time when people are hurting so much, but there's something nice about things just
being normal. Even little things being normal. I don't even like sports that much, but I
miss them. I don't even care about the outcome. I just like to have it in the background,
because it's normal. It's normal. Normal is nice. You really don't realize how much you need
normal until you are forced to live without it. I was talking to one of my friends about normal
the other day. And I promise you I'm going to preach from
the Scripture in a moment. My Scriptures are Exodus 14:10-15 and Romans
12:1-2. Go ahead and turn to those two books, one
in the Old Testament, one in the New. But I've been hearing this phrase so much. "Oh man! I just can't wait until things get back to
normal." But something arrested my attention the other
day. The person who was saying to me how much she
was waiting for stuff to get back to normal had complained to me two months ago, before
any of this global pandemic started, about how much she hated her life. That was weird to me, because the normal she
had been complaining about two months ago was the normal she would give anything to
get back to right now. Some of us would give anything for normal
right about now, would give anything to get to deal with the annoying person you work
next to if you could get back to work. "Oh, I would sit next to Teresa all day and
pretend like her stories were good and funny and interesting and her breath didn't smell
bad. I would love some normal right about now." It's like when you go to college. You know, if you went to college and you hated
your hometown, and then you get dropped off in the middle of a new world, and nothing
is familiar. You were complaining. "I just can't wait to leave Moncks Corner." (Shout-out to Moncks Corner. We sent Convoy of Hope and Elevation Outreach
resources and teams all week to help those who were devastated. You're going to be seeing about that soon
if you haven't already.) But, man! I hated my hometown for a minute until I left
it, and then everything that felt small to me started to feel… I don't know. Instead of confining, it felt comforting. Here's what I'm trying to say, because I think
I'm being a little bit too vague for you. Some of the stuff you're praying for right
now is the same stuff you were praying away two months ago. Isn't it weird how quickly we can shift to
where what we want to get back to is the same thing we wanted to escape from? It's so easy in a moment like this for us
to make our goal getting back to normal, but here's what the Lord showed me. This is where I need my hot pink Sharpie. I think red would have been better, but I
couldn't find one, so I'm doing hot pink. I want us to shift our mentality today. This may be a whole teaching series. I don't know. Because I'm hearing so many people say, "I
want to get back to normal. I want to get back to the way things were. I want to get back to… I want to get back to…" The Lord posed a question to me this week:
What if normal isn't something to get back to? What if normal is something to look forward
to? What if the normal we knew is not the normal
God is leading us into next? This might be the most anointed message I've
ever preached in my life. It's called Looking Forward to Normal. Why do we assume that normal is back there? Why would we, as Christians who serve a God
who is always moving forward, from glory to glory, from strength to strength…? Why would we serve a God like that, a God
whose very essence is defined by resurrection…? Why would we serve a God who is defined by
resurrection, new beginnings, and think the whole goal is to get back to something we
knew before? I hope that certain things are normal again. I hope, for God's sake, that my kids can go
back to real school again. I hope, for God's sake, that certain things
in our society change. I hope, for God's sake, there's a time where
these chairs can be full of people again. Even the obnoxious parking volunteers at Elevation… I missed them today. You know, the ones who do too much. You know, the extra parking volunteers, where
you're like, "It's 8:45. It don't take all that. Just wave me to my parking space, man. Just because you have a baton doesn't mean
you have to act like a clown." But I even miss the hyperactive parking volunteers. I even miss the people in the church who looked
bored while I was preaching, the ones who looked like terrorists when I was preaching
to them. I miss them! I want normal back. But God has been speaking to my spirit, eFam. God has been speaking to my spirit, and yours
too, but you just didn't have the language for it. God said, "I'm bringing you into a new normal,
because what you thought was normal wasn't really normal. It was just what you knew." I'm going to show you this from the Scripture. Turn in your Bible to Exodus, chapter 14, and let me show you
how God's people have always been trying to go back to normal at the moments when God
is trying to bring us into something new. This message is for my business owners in
the church, those of you who are hoping things go back to normal, but you know they won't,
but you don't know what to do. This message is for those in the church who
are trying to deal with a level of uncertainty that was unprecedented in your life before,
and you're just trying to even get a daily schedule figured out. This message is for you. This message is even for those who have lost
something in this season that you will never get back again. The question becomes…What is the new normal
God has known all along? What is the new normal I should look forward
to? Now, remember this and write it down: faith
looks forward. You'll see in Exodus, chapter 14… Remember, a nation that has only known slavery
in Egypt for 430 years. When that is all you've known, that's what
is normal. On one hand, they hated it. They hated it because not only was there no
freedom in it but there was frustration that was increasing because the Egyptian taskmasters
had begun to require more from the Israelites than they could reasonably do. I mean, they'd make them make bricks, but
they wouldn't give them straw. "Go fetch your own straw and make the same
number of bricks. You still have to fulfill your quota, but
you're not going to have enough to do it with." Listen. This is a generation of people who had gotten
used to never having enough. I wonder, for us, has never enough become
our normal? I'm not talking about last week or the week
before that, and I'm not talking about bank account. I think the spirit of this age is the spirit
of never enough. We can never get enough information. We can never get enough what we call connection. It's not really connection; it's just the
apparatus. It's just the illusion of connection that
really keeps us more fragmented than ever before. So now we call ourselves connected in the
world because we have social media. I'm thinking about introducing a new trend. Social distancing is catching on. We're practicing it right now. But how about social media distancing? That's when you can go more than five minutes
without your phone. Social media distancing. It's a thing. Put it in the chat. Five minutes without your phone. See, to us now it's completely normal for
us to be overloaded all the time and to have access to everything that's happening in the
world, and then we wonder why we are so fearful, why we can't feel. It's because we were never intended to carry
so much in our minds and in our hearts, but to us it's just normal. We're used to making bricks without straw. Many of us are used to never really getting
a good night's sleep. It's just normal. We're used to running around this and that
and the other. We're used to spending too much money. It's normal. Totally normal. It's what the neighbors do. It's what my dad did. So, what we're seeing in Exodus 14 isn't just
God's people coming out of Egypt as a territory; they're coming out of what they've known as
normal. So while it sounds sexy… "Open the grave! I'm coming out! I'm going to live!" But what if you've gotten so used to death
that real life seems weird? "Get back to normal." I'm not so sure. This is how the Israelites expressed it. Are y'all ready? Exodus 14:10: "As Pharaoh approached…" Wait. Pharaoh represents fear. Pharaoh represents the old. Got it? Pharaoh said, "Eat," you ate. Pharaoh said, "Make bricks," you made bricks. Pharaoh is the old boss, the old regime. Pharaoh is the old ruler, but he's also the
one who fed you. So Pharaoh is the one who fed you and Pharaoh
is the one you fear. A lot of the things we get used to meet certain
needs in our lives, and until we know a better way to meet that need, we will always depend
on the wrong source. That's what addiction is. It meets a need. For some of you, that's what that person you
keep running back to every three weeks who isn't good for you is. That's a form of Pharaoh. That's what certain thought patterns we embrace
are to us. See, they're familiar, and this is the principle
I want to show you: when you are afraid, you reach for what's familiar. This is very explicit in Exodus 14. "As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked
up, and there were the Egyptians…" The ones they were running from. "…marching after them. They
were terrified…" They were afraid. They experienced fear. "They were terrified and cried out to the
Lord. They said to Moses, 'Was it because there
were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?'" The sarcasm is dripping in this statement. Egypt was famous for graves. Three quarters of their land mass was set
aside for graves. So when they say, "Were there no graves in
Egypt?" it's like saying, "Were there no trees in Charlotte?" It's like saying, "Was there no orange at
Elevation?" It's like saying, "Was there no electric guitar
in Slash?" It's like, that's what Egypt was known for. It was known for graves. Watch this. When you feel afraid, you crave familiar,
even if familiar is killing you. Egypt was killing them, and on one hand they're
crying out, "Get us out of here! We'll go anywhere. We'll do anything. God, just make it stop." Some of y'all were praying that three months
ago. "God, I need a change. God, this is not working. God, I'm not happy. God, I don't feel joy." Remember? Remember three months ago when you were praying,
"God, help me get my priorities…"? Remember your New Year's resolutions? I know that was like BC, before corona. You're like, "Oh, well, I've gained 17 pounds
since then. I'm just trying to breathe. That's my new New Year's resolution: Take
another breath. Take another breath. Take another breath." But when you feel fear, you reach for familiar. When God showed me this, I realized why, to
me, sometimes negative feels normal. A lot of times, when I'm feeling uncertain,
unstable…little thing, big thing…I reach for something negative, because negative is
what I know. Not because I had horrible parents. I had great parents. But I will say this: My dad was not normal. His childhood was not normal. His dad killed himself when he was 9, on his
ninth birthday. That was not normal. In fact, one of the last things my dad said
to me while he was alive was, "I only ever wanted to be normal." He was talking about his upbringing, when
he was sent to reform school, and just the different things that happened in his life,
you know, blowing through two marriages before he met my mom, and all of that. He was saying, "I just always wanted to be
normal. I've never been normal." The Bible says that about Moses who was leading
the people out of Egypt. Did you know that? It says in Acts, chapter 7, verse 20, that
Moses was no ordinary child. Isn't that cool? Say this as a compliment to whoever you're
sitting next to. I hope this doesn't start an argument. Tell them, "You're not normal." In fact, tell them stronger. Say, "You've never been normal." You've never been normal. There's nothing normal about you. Normal
is just a story you've told yourself. So, the Israelites, God help them… They are standing at a Red Sea, which is a
body of water they have no context for. Like us right now. We have no context for this crisis. We have no context for this challenge. We have no precedence for this global pandemic
because we've never lived through one. When they felt terrified, watch what they
did. They craved familiar. "Were there no graves in Egypt? We'd rather be dead in Egypt than alive in
uncertainty." They craved the grave over having to stand
in front of something in an uncertain situation. And so do we. We do it all the time. We go back to places that kill us, people
that kill us, patterns that kill us, routines that kill us, bottles that kill us, pills
that kill us, stations that kill us, feeds that kill us, websites that kill us, accounts
that kill us, thoughts that kill us, because it's normal, and normal is nice. If you don't think so, you never had a nice
old sweatshirt. It's nice because it's normal. It's not nice because it looks good. It looks terrible. You look homeless, but it's normal. "Oh, I like this. This is my good sweatshirt. These are my good underwear with seven holes
in them. It has seven holes, but it's normal. It feels familiar." So watch this. Normal is not all that. "I just want it to be the way it was. We want to go back to Egypt. Take us back to Egypt." The place you were crying out to God to take
you from? Now you want to go back? "Yeah, I want to go back. I want to go back to normal. God, I will never complain about my kid's
teacher again just as long as it doesn't have to be me. I'm going back to normal. I just want normal. Just normal. I just need something normal." That's why I wanted to come in the building
to preach to you. It was like, "Do you want to do it in a studio?" I was like, "No, no, no." Because I want people to get a little bit
of normal. I think it'll help people. Even our eFam that meets all over the world… When I say "all over the world," watch the
chat. Put in the chat if you're from somewhere other
than Charlotte, and put where it is. I just want you to see I'm not lying. There's nothing normal about this church. The church I grew up in was like 100 people. It was an amazing church, but the town of
Moncks Corner was only 6,000. That was my normal. So as the ministry grows bigger, to me it's
not familiar, so sometimes I fear when something is expanding or getting bigger because it's
not normal to me. It's really difficult for us to understand,
those of us who were coming to church buildings in Riverwalk and Concord. "O God, we're building a building for Concord,
and now we don't get to use it. That's so bad, God. Just let us get back to the plan. Let us get back to the thing we had a few
weeks ago. I know I was complaining about it, but I'll
take it. I'm sorry, God. I'm so sorry. Give it back. Give me my job back. I'm so sorry, God. Get my car back. I'll ride my Honda Accord. Just let me take it somewhere. Just have something for me to do. God, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it." Because when you're in something you don't
know, you crave normal. Do you see all of those cities and hamlets
and provinces on that screen? I can't read them all out. There are too many. That's amazing. You know, I used to say this all the time
to our church. I used to say to the people who could come
to church here in a physical location, "Some people came here this weekend on their honeymoon,
their vacation. They wanted to come to Elevation." "Where do you want to go to vacation this
year? Do you want to go to Disney World?" "I want to go to Elevation." The vacation destination of the world right
here off of 521. Some people would be here like, "Man, this
was on my bucket list to come to Elevation." People would say that. "This was on my bucket list." I used to say to those of y'all who were sitting
out there, "Don't ever take for granted that what God put in your backyard is on somebody
else's bucket list." Didn't I say that? Now I can show you better than I can tell
you. Some of the same people who used to complain
about the parking lot at Ballantyne… I bet you would love to have to wait for a
parking space right now if you could just come to church and be in the presence of God. Now, I know some of you are like, "No, I kind
of like this 'church at home' thing better. This is actually pretty awesome, Brother Steve. I'll tell you what. That eFam was on to something. This is really an innovation right here. I'll tell you what right now. I'm sitting right here. I've got my Oreos, and I'm getting spiritually
fed as well. Praise the Lord. Christ and carbohydrates. This is the ticket. I'll tell you what. I praise God for innovative ministry. This is a digital revolution. This is a revival." You know, all I'm trying to think about these
days is not the normal I want to get back to, because I have a feeling… And I think you do too. Let's just have the funeral right now. We are not going back to normal. We're not. I was on a Zoom call this week with a department
on our staff, and by the end of it I was beating the desk, saying, "Y'all aren't getting it. Everything has changed. Y'all are having a normal meeting. This is not a normal time. People need the gospel more than ever before,
and y'all are talking about what happened 10 days ago. Right now for our ministry we have to be in
the moment, because people need this oxygen." This is not a normal time. This is not a normal church. I hope in some ways this building is full
again, but I hope we never go back to normal where we come into church and act like it's
just our right to come in here. I hope we never go back to normal where we
just come in and we can't get the eye booger out of our eyes until the fourth song, until
they play our favorite song, and everything has to match our preference, and we just kind
of yawn and wait for it to be over. I hope we never go back to normal! I'm never going back to normal. Never. It has never been normal. So, I'm up here last week, thinking, "Oh man,
this is not a normal Easter. I'm wearing leather. We're singing a song that sounds more like
Stone Temple Pilots than Michael W. Smith. We're kicking over stuff. It's supposed to be Easter." The weirdest part about that is in 2011, we
did something called 3D Easter. I traveled to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon,
and everybody had 3D glasses on. It was real budget 3D, but it was enough for
us to market it as 3D Easter. And it was good too. It was creative. It was the gospel…Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria,
ends of the earth, the three different places God brings it to. I used an old church to talk about God saving
people who are religious but don't have a relationship, and then I used Vegas to talk
about Samaria, the wild people in the world. Then I talked about the ends of the earth
at the Grand Canyon. No matter how far away you feel from God… And everybody was sitting there with their
3D glasses on. I have pictures of that, of me in a suit with
3D glasses on, standing there like happy Easter Jesus. And now I want to be normal? Now you want to be normal? "I can't wait till church gets back to normal." What normal are you talking about? Because people say, "I just want to go back
to the old-time religion." What they mean by old-time is 1955. Isn't that funny how we freeze-frame? It's like, "I just like the old hymns." How old? Do you want Gregorian chants? Do you want AD 397? "No, no, no. I'm talking about the old hymns." Oh, you mean the ones that are familiar. You mean the ones you know. You want to go back to what you know. You know what's crazy? Those hymns you want to sing now are the ones
you yawned through when you were little. You didn't even know what you had when you
had it. Now God is teaching us to appreciate some
things we took for granted, but we can't right now. I just appreciate the opportunity. Some of us who complained about airports are
going to be begging them to pat us down if we can ever go get on a plane again. "Please pat me down. Pat me anywhere. Pat me once. Just anything. Anything normal." "We want to go back to Egypt!" Really? I thought you wanted to leave. All I'm trying to say is God is doing some
of the stuff we asked him to do, but we don't know it because we're trying to get back to
normal. "I just want to get back to normal." You mean when you were running around like
a chicken with your head cut off? What a graphic idiom. It's so vulgar. Do you see, though? It's just normal. We just say that: "A chicken with your head
cut off." If you stop and picture it, it's grotesque. See how anything can become normalized? Then we get confused, because we think that
what we know is what's normal. That's where phrases like white privilege
come from. It means that, as a white man, certain things
I think are just normal are not the same experiences of brothers or sisters who are not white males. You think it's normal? Your normal is somebody else's goal. Just to even be treated equally. You have to understand just because something
is normal to you does not mean it's normal to everyone. That's very important for us to understand. The best example I could give you is with
my kids. Abbey asked me the other day, "What would
you tell 9-year-old Steven Furtick…" Because she's 9. "…if you could tell him
anything?" I was like, "I would tell him that one day,
you're not going to walk through Walmart looking at CDs, figuring out which one to buy. You are going to be able to instantly listen
to any music in the history of the universe on a device that is the size of a note card." I would tell him that video games are going
to radically change. See, for us, Tecmo Bowl was high-tech. When my kids are playing video games now,
they laugh at my video games, because their normal was something I didn't even know to
imagine. For instance, Abbey, we didn't have roadblocks;
flying unicorns; neon unicorns; flying, driving, neon, exploding unicorns. We didn't have any of that. And once you bought the game, you didn't have
to spend any more money on it. That's new. You bought it one dang time. Now, you had to blow in it until you had a
seizure to get it to work, but once you bought it, it was yours and you didn't have to buy
anything else for it. You didn't have to grind to get your team
ready. My god! It's a video game, not a job! But it's your normal. It's your normal that we put Trolls on the
video screen. Look at me sounding like an old man. It's your normal that we rented the movie
Trolls World Tour and we didn't have to go… See, back in the day… Let me give you a history lesson. Back in yonder ye, back in the times of Jesus,
Blockbuster Video reigned supreme. Come on. Y'all don't know anything about late fees,
and I know you don't know anything about rewinding or you pay an extra 99 cents. If you don't rewind the tape… I'm taking you back. That was normal. Not now. My daughter has never been in a Blockbuster
in her life. "Blockbuster? What's Blockbuster?" So here's the question. I'm going to go deep on you. Are you holding on to a Blockbuster blessing? Something God is trying to put out of business
in your life? Something that God is saying, "You know what? I'm taking you through something uncertain
right now. I'm taking you through something right now
that you've never seen before, but just because you've never seen it before doesn't mean it's
not normal." Just because I have never known it doesn't
mean it's not normal. "You mean it can be normal for me to have
a heart that is at peace?" Yes! Yes! That's how it's supposed to be. You are supposed to have peace in the middle
of a storm. Jesus did. He slept through stuff that we scramble about
because he's not from here. See, when you're from somewhere else, it changes
what you see as normal. Because I come from a different place, because
I am not from this world, because it is not my home, I do not have to accept the patterns
of this world as normal. I don't have to accept Egypt as normal. What if God is trying to bring me into a new
normal but I'm so afraid I reach for what's familiar? Can I tell you one new normal I think God
is trying to give us right now? Better priorities. We are so toxic in the way we treat each other,
what we say to each other, how we categorize and box each other. Well, we can't box each other like that anymore. Now I need you and you need me, and if we
don't all do what we're supposed to do, we may not ever get out of this. God is making a nation. God is bringing the people through the Red
Sea together, but not for them to go through. For them to get there, there's something they
have to give up. Question: What is God calling you to give
up to get there? What if there's a new normal? What if your true nature has been so buried
and embedded in what Romans 12 calls the patterns of this world…? Here's what I want to show you from Romans
12:1. Some of you have heard this Scripture before,
but let's put it in context. Just like the children of Israel were going
through the Red Sea… And remember, all they've known as normal,
all their parents knew as normal, all their parents' parents knew as normal, all their
parents' parents' parents knew as normal… This is 430 years. Look at how weird our world has gotten in
just a few weeks. This is 430 years of you thinking you're never
supposed to have enough, you'll never be free. This is what it's like to be in bondage. Some of you know this because you've been
in bondage to depression. You've been in bondage to patterns of thought. This is a chain-breaking Scripture in Romans
12:1. I never saw
it before, y'all. Watch this Scripture in Romans 12:1. Are you ready? This revelation to me… I've read both of these Scriptures a lot. They're both classic passages. The children of Israel are coming through
the Red Sea. They want to go back to Egypt. They want to go back to what they've known. They want to go back to what's familiar because
they are afraid. I'd rather go back to what is negative, even
if it's not really normal. We'll call negative normal just because it's
what we know. Do you see this? Some of the things I've called normal my whole
life aren't normal. This Scripture shows me the full extent of
it in Jesus Christ. Now let's put the gospel on this Old Testament
passage. "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters,
in view of God's mercy…" That's not normal. How many of you in a relationship can do wrong
over and over and over and over and over again and the person fully accepts you? Only God. So in view of that kind of mercy… That's where we get used to things. Things we used to be grateful for we become
entitled to. Remember, for this community Paul is writing
to, none of this is normal. They're used to relating to God through a
sacrificial system. When they come before God, they have to make
offerings and spill blood in order to have their prayer requests heard, in order to meet
with God, in order to atone for sin. So this is not normal for Paul to be talking
about mercy, coming to God on the basis of grace. This is new. This is a new normal. And do you know what their temptation was? To go back to the old way. So he's telling them, "No, no, no, no. In view of God's mercy, I urge you, I need
you to, I'm begging you to, stop trying to get back to normal. Stop thinking there's something you could
do to earn God's love and realize it has already been done through the gift of his Son Jesus
Christ, that the blood has already been shed. Instead of getting back to normal, move forward
into this new way of life. Instead of offering pigeons and turtledoves
and lambs and goats and rams, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to
God. This is your true and proper worship. This is your new normal. Your new normal is that you are forgiven and
not condemned." Your new normal is that you are a child of
the Most High God. I am no ordinary child. I am a child of God. Moses and I have Acts 7:20 in common. I am no ordinary child; I am a child of God. I am a royal priesthood. I am a holy nation. I am set apart. I'm not trying to be normal. Normal is broken. The culture is broken. The world is weird, and it didn't just get
weird when a virus was unleashed. The world has been weird for a long time. I'm going to show you in the Bible. This is way before coronavirus. You got it? Romans 12:2: "Do not conform to the pattern
of this world…" Why not? Because the world is weird. "I don't know about Christians. They're weird." Do you know what's kind of cool about going
through something really traumatic? What used to be weird now is the only thing
that works. That's the only thing I'm excited about. I'm not excited about anybody being sick,
anybody dying, anybody losing their job, anybody losing their company, anybody losing their
life's work. I'm not excited about anybody having to work
20-hour days. I'm not excited about any of it, but what
I am excited about is that our faith finally fits. See, the world always operates by logic, but
now we've come to a Red Sea. So the world is trying what it has always
tried. "Ah, more information." And none of it works. So now there's room to do what Romans 12:1
says, and worship isn't weird anymore. It's not weird to worship now, is it? Because the only thing I can do now is call
on God. People are praying right now who used to think
praying was superstitious. It's not weird anymore. For once, we're not the weird ones. For just a minute, let's just take this moment. It's like we're a middle school boy who finally
hit a growth spurt, and our voice isn't cracking, and we finally fit. The church finally fits. You could send this link to somebody today,
and they wouldn't be annoyed that you invited them to church. They'd be excited. They are bored to death. They have three ulcers. They have ulcers in places where you don't
even normally get ulcers. So faith finally fits. This is our moment! This is our time! This is what we were born to do. I wasn't born to be normal. We fit. It's an amazing moment. Finally, there's space for faith in your life. As long as everything is normal, there's no
space for faith. "Oh, I've got this. I've figured this out. Here's what I do: I take the kids here, and
I take the kids there, and I take the kids there, and I take the kids there." The Lord said that in this season he is helping
people reset their schedules. Since you didn't want to do it manually… Now, as the whole thing is shut down, one
of the new normals God might bring us into is that we have a different baseline for busy
or a reordering of priorities. Think about this. Many of us worshiped soccer more than we worshiped
the Savior. I know that sounds like one of those clichés. I would normally do it in the country preacher
voice. "Y'all worship soccer more than the Savior." But it's the dang truth. I don't have anything against soccer other
than I hate it, but listen to me, church. Are you listening to me right now? Sit up and listen to this. God said, "I'm not trying to get you back
to the normal where you worshiped your kids' activities and left no space for me. I'm not trying to bring you back to that Egypt
where you had to make bricks without straw and you were just spending your money and
spending your time and never full, with holes in your purses, and just running after this
and running after that to impress people." Now you're going through a season where you
can put on any clothes you want and nobody is going to see them. God is reordering some priorities, because… Romans 12:2: "Do not conform to the pattern
of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Why? The world was weird to begin with. It's not normal. Even the way you develop your construct of
the world is important. Right? If you get your construct of what the world
is like from the news, you will not know normal. The news does not make money by showing you
normal. The news makes money by showing you the most
extreme example to keep you watching. You think the news is there to inform you? The news is not there to inform you. The news is there to engage you so you'll
keep watching. You're getting your construct of the world
right now from the news, the news, the news, the news. That's not normal. I'm not telling you not to check the news;
I'm telling you not to watch it all the time. It's not normal. That is not normal. You know how the world has these patterns,
all of these patterns of the world where we overextend ourselves all the time. We do all of these things to impress people. That has never been normal. That has just been culturally accepted. That doesn't make it normal. What does God call normal? That's what I want to know in this season. What does God call normal? I told Elijah the other day, "I don't care
if you like sports or don't like sports. If music is your thing…" I grew up with this too. The kids who did sports were normal. The kids who liked music were weird. You know what? I'm 40 and I probably can't play sports anymore
either, even if I was good at them at one time, but I can still make music. What was weird then is making ministry happen
now. "Do not be conformed…" That's to be acted upon by the outside. That's conform. You can make it what you want it to be. That's what the world has done to us for so
long. "Your faith goes here. Don't talk about your faith." That's not normal. The world is weird. Faith is normal. Faith is the substance of things hoped for
and the evidence of things not seen. Now we get it, that the unseen is the most
significant. I've been preaching this since the beginning
of the year, but now we finally get it, that what is unseen is most significant. We get it because we're fighting a virus we
can't see. Now we understand that the things which are
seen were made of things which do not appear. Faith finally fits, because we are standing
in front of the Red Sea, and we no longer understand, and we can't count on the things
we used to count on. In one sense, we want them back for comfort,
but God cannot bring change while we hold to comfort. There is a new normal. There is a better you, a truer you, a real
you. The patterns of this world are just pretend. It is not real. There is a peace that comes from above. There is a wisdom that whispers, and it doesn't
shout. God said, "I'm not trying to get you back
to normal; I'm trying to bring you into it." I'm looking forward to normal. I'm looking forward to God reinventing me. I'm looking forward to God increasing my capacity
to connect with people for real. I prayed that God would help me with my gratitude. I'm looking forward to being able to put it
into practice in the next season. I'm looking forward to normal, not trying
to get back to it. I left Egypt. I'm not trying to conform to the pattern of
this world. I want God to transform me by the renewing
of my mind. That starts with what I thought was normal. What I thought was normal wasn't normal. It's just what I knew. I'm so glad my dad wasn't normal. I mean, at times I wasn't, but looking back,
I got my passion to preach from the fact that he wasn't normal. I'm not trying to be normal. I found out that what the world calls normal
God calls broken. So when I pray for healing, understand I'm
not just praying for bodies to be healed in this season. I'm not just talking about immune systems;
I'm talking about belief systems. "Do you hear this preacher? I don't know. He looks kind of wild today." I am wild today. I'm ready to flip this thing upside down. What the world calls weird, God calls normal. Jesus was the only one on the boat who was
normal. Everybody who was freaking out in fear were
weird. So I pray that God would bring us into a new
normal. There's nothing normal about faith. There was never meant to be. There was nothing normal about a shepherd
boy fighting a giant with a slingshot. You thought that was normal? What was normal was all of the boys with the
heavy equipment who didn't know how to do anything with it. There was nothing normal about a virgin birth. Have you ever had one? Did you get here that way? Well, if that's the way Jesus came into the
world, what makes us think it's going to be any different now? When we pray for him to show up, he's not
going to show up looking normal. There's nothing normal about stretching your
staff over the sea. There's nothing normal about what we're going
through right now. There's nothing normal about the panic. There's nothing normal about the fear. There's nothing normal about the order of
things. There's nothing normal about the rules. I pulled up to a red light today on the way
to church, and I was like, "Do we still stop for these? I don't know. Maybe we don't anymore." Nothing is normal, yet maybe God is bringing
us closer to what he wanted for us all along. Maybe. Maybe God is resetting and revealing, resetting
and revealing. "Be not conformed…" Outside in. "…to the patterns of this world, but be
transformed…" Inside out. Stuck in my house, but, God, transform my
family, transform my mind, transform my habit. Give me new neural pathways. Teach me new ways to trust you. I'm not trying to get back to normal. I'm moving forward into a new normal. That's what the kingdom of God is. It's a new normal, a new way of being, a new
form of humanity, a new level of faith. Do it, God. That's what faith is. It's a new normal. "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Huh? That's weird. No, that's the way it is. We've just been weird for so long we got it
out of order, but God is bringing us into new normals. "How long until we get back to normal?" You can keep waiting all you want or you can
worship. You can keep resisting or you can receive. I love what God told Moses when the people
were looking for someone to blame. You know how we do? Yeah. "It was the bats. It was the lab. It was this. It was that. It was her who got…" We always want somebody to blame, but blaming
somebody doesn't bring you into what God is taking you into. No sooner did they get to this uncertain place,
they started to say to Moses, "Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve
the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve
the Egyptians than to die in the desert!" But Moses answered the people. Hear the word of the Lord. "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance
the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never
see again." What does that mean? You're never going back to normal. You're moving into a new freedom. I'll minister this to you like it was just
us. I love it, because it can just be like we're
having a conversation right now. We're not in a big crowd right now. It's just you and me. The Lord told me to tell you, "You're never
going back to normal." In fact, some of the stuff you thought was
normal wasn't really normal; it was just old. This is a season to embrace the new normal. Lord God of our fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call on your name
now because you never change and you never fail. We stand before you not only as a nation but
as a planet, and we so crave normal. We stand before seas we don't know how to
part holding nothing more than a stick in our hands. Our natural defenses are nothing for the principalities
we face that we cannot see. If it were only a virus we were fighting we
could solve it on a physiological level, but, God, the truth is we need something more than
that. Many of us were controlled by fear long before
there was a virus to fight. Many of us were dominated by depression way
before we were quarantined. So, when we've been asking you, "God, make
it normal again, make it normal again; get us back to Egypt," we've been really praying
the wrong thing. We've been praying for familiar, but what
we really want is freedom. I pray you would use this season in our lives,
as horrible as it may be, as weird as it may be, to make something beautiful, creative,
supernatural. Do it, God. Do it for your people. Do it for every man, woman, boy, and girl. Give us a new normal. The old one wasn't really normal. It just felt familiar. We trust you, Lord. Not always like we want to, but we kind of
feel like the disciples did in John 6. Where else are we going to go? You're our hope. You're our normal. We pray like you taught us to pray. I want you to repeat this prayer after me. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be
your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven." That's what Romans 12:2 says. After you have shattered the patterns of this
world, you can be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and you will be able to prove
what his will is…his good, pleasing, and perfect will. God, I pray that you would reveal your will
to people right now. We need strategy. We need you to speak. We need you to speak into the unseen places
of our lives. Part waters, God. Do it. Part the waters of worry until we can clearly
see how your sovereign hand is moving through it all. We thank you, Lord. What a great God you are. What an awesome covenant we have in you, that
you will lead us through it, and the Egyptians we see today… We're never going back to normal. The Scripture says in 2 Corinthians 5:17,
"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come." I believe that today there may be somebody
who needs to give your life to Jesus Christ. You've never surrendered control of your life
to God, and you've heard this message today about a new normal. God wants to create a new you, give you a
brand-new start. On the cross was nailed everything that stood
against you, and when Jesus rose from the dead in his body, it was that he might raise
you to life in your spirit, and you'll never be the same. Right now, I want to pray with you. We do this every single week. This is our custom. This is our normal, but for somebody, there's
nothing normal about this moment. This is your moment to come home to God, to
come back to God, to come to God for the first time. Pray this prayer after me out loud. Heavenly Father, I am a sinner in need of
a savior, and I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world,
and today I make Jesus the Lord of my life. I believe he died that I would be forgiven
and rose again to give me life. I receive this new life. This is my new beginning. In Jesus' name, amen. If you just prayed that, I want you to type
in the chat, "I received Jesus." We're going to celebrate with you right now. We're clapping our hands. Angels are rejoicing. Come on! It's a new day, a new nature, a new normal. I'm looking forward to it. Newfound freedom. I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to preach part 2 of this next weekend. Are you looking forward to it? A new normal, a new nature. I did not even get to these notes today. Do you know how many notes God gave me to
talk to us about normal? Look at how abnormally I wrote my notes. I couldn't get it down fast enough. I'm telling you, I'm excited about the Word
of God. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word
of God. We're not normal. This is not a normal church. Never have been, never will be. God, deliver us from normal and bring us into
new. I am so thankful for you. So thankful. I'm headed home now. Graham has been begging me to leave the church
for about three hours now. Isn't that right, Abbey? Abbey: It's definitely right. Steven: Don't worry; Holly is driving. Completely safe. But I just wanted to thank you. Thank you for not being a normal church. I just quoted a verse at the end of that message. "Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word
of God." The verses right before that in Romans, chapter
10, say, "How can they preach unless they're sent?" It takes people like you, a family like this,
to send the gospel into the world. Thank you for your giving. Thank you for sharing the gospel. Don't stop now. God is bringing us into new opportunities. Just know we're praying for you. We're here for you. Make sure you subscribe. Make sure you share. I want to hear from you this week what this
message means to you. Let's get ready for what God has next. I know one thing: it's not going to be normal.
